Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

[ambrose]

Even if Von Trier "only" suffers from OCD (as he claimed to do in an old interview), there are quite a few similarities between that condition and Asperger's.
(they are, as I have already stated, both part of the autistic spectrum) The obsessive rambling nature of his admittedly humorous response ties in to an obsessive personality.

[Mr Sausage]

Even if Von Trier "only" suffers from OCD (as he claimed to do in an old interview), there are quite a few similarities between that condition and Asperger's.
(they are, as I have already stated, both part of the autistic spectrum) The obsessive rambling nature of his admittedly humorous response ties in to an obsessive personality.

You're going about this the wrong way. You shouldn't be looking for the things that confirm your conclusion (a pitfall of any self-diagnoser). You should be looking for those things that deny it.

Most of all, your explanation is unnecessary. No one needs asperger's or OCD to make a failed joke and then follow that up with an embarrassed, rambling attempt to save the situation. There is a much simpler explanation.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

There is a much simpler explanation.

Space aliens

[Alan Smithee]

Definitely seems Von Trier is a little shaken by this thing hurting his career. Also seems he's serious about making that porno.

[MichaelB]

Lars Von Trier has been forced to watch every film he has ever made before being allowed back into the Cannes film festival.

[domino harvey]

Ugh, fake news from anyone but The Onion is a jailable offense

[Orphic Lycidas]

Haven't seen this here yet. Seven new clips from the film. Clip #3 is my favorite.

[Orphic Lycidas]

Melancholia special effects.

[Roger Ryan]

Melancholia special effects.

I see Von Trier is continuing his Tarkovsky allusions by including the Bruegel painting in the film...not to mention the use of a horse.

[lacritfan]

If you live in Southern California and don't have a 9 to 5-er : I have no idea why but Melancholia is playing once a day (1:10pm) at the Laemmle Fallbrook until Thursday 7/28.

[Jeff]

If you live in Southern California and don't have a 9 to 5-er : I have no idea why but Melancholia is playing once a day (1:10pm) at the Laemmle Fallbrook until Thursday 7/28.

They're doing an Oscar qualifying run. They want to release it On Demand in conjunction with (or maybe slightly before) its full theatrical rollout, but if it doesn't play for a week in L.A. county before its TV debut, it's not eligible.

[lacritfan]

They're doing an Oscar qualifying run. They want to release it On Demand in conjunction with (or maybe slightly before) its full theatrical rollout, but if it doesn't play for a week in L.A. county before its TV debut, it's not eligible.

Ah, I couldn't figure out that "(AQ)" = Academy Qualifying.

[zedz]

This seems to me von Trier’s most mature film since The Idiots. Whereas Antichrist was an immediate reaction to / against his struggle with serious depression, Melancholia is a more considered and ambitious film about the same thing. In fact, I wonder if its genesis wasn’t Lars’ bloody-minded response to some inane well-wisher’s reassurance that whatever he was going through, “it’s not the end of the world.”

The film’s prologue is a self-conscious showstopper, in the mould of the opening of Antichrist. Even without the rest of the film, it would be one of the films of the year, and I think its overwhelming beauty and terror is what got a lot of the audience through the comparatively low-key hand-held talkfest of the following two hours – since we know we’re going back there.

After that, we get, in the first part, a richly cast, very entertaining wedding melodrama and then a much more subdued, Bergman-style chamber piece in the second (and throughout, we’re treated to the originating images and events for the remarkable tableaux in the prologue, and checking them off becomes an interesting kind of countdown to doom). The effect of the human story that occupies the central two hours is to transform the events of the prologue into perhaps the most outlandish instance of pathetic fallacy ever conceived.

The narrative structure is interesting, since there’s no surprise about how everything ends up, so it becomes more a case of observing how the main characters adapt themselves to the inevitable.

Spoiler

In this respect it becomes a kind of case study of optimism, realism and pessimism, with pessimist / depressive Justine ultimately finding herself the most functional and level-headed person in the room. After all, it’s only the end of the world. She’s seen worse.

The end, when it comes – and even though you know there’s absolutely no way it can live up to the beginning – does not disappoint, and it’s an object lesson that films should be seen on the biggest screen available, with the best sound system.

So what was going on at Cannes? If I were to indulge in a spot of psychoanalysis, I’d speculate that this is quite possibly von Trier’s most personal film yet (it’s very easy to see Justine as a self-portrait), and he dealt with that self-exposure by, first, downplaying the seriousness and importance of the film and second, when that didn’t work, by shooting himself in the foot at the press conference, thereby creating a convenient alibi for not winning the Palme d’Or. Frankly, without the coincidental appearance of Malick’s Comet, it seems to me that this would have been a shoo-in.

Dunst fully deserved her win, as she manages to tie together a role that, as written, is deliberately all over the place, and she gets to play all kinds of moods and the sudden transitions between them. I don’t suffer from depression myself, but a woman I know who does found Dunst’s performance extremely persuasive and affecting, and indeed found the entire film deeply personal and very close to the bone.

Despite the overall quality of the film, some of van Trier’s recurrent problems are still present. The vast majority of the characters never rise above the status of cartoons. I think this is one of the reasons why I tend to find his comedies more accomplished than his dramas, and the first part of Melancholia is very funny indeed, while also managing, through the more nuanced performances of Dunst, Gainsbourg and Skarsgard the younger (and a wonderful Charlotte Rampling, who secretes enough acid in what’s really only a glorified cameo to scar the entire cast), to carry plenty of authentic dramatic heft.

In the second half, it gets more serious and the cast thins out, so the problems with characterisation are a bit harder to ignore, primarily when we’re expected to swallow Kiefer Sutherland’s transition from comic figure to tragic figure between scenes, with hardly any time spent as an actual character.

But by this point the momentum of the drama is strong enough to withstand that kind of glitch. Similarly, at the start there’s some very clunky exposition when Dunst just happens to notice Antares (so she can just happen to notice its absence a little later on), but because we’re impatient for the cosmic disaster plot to get moving, we can get past the creakiness of the plot mechanics. The shaggy-dog ‘tagline’ subplot is a bit more of a liability, since it’s nowhere near as funny as it should be, and just ends up as an excuse for an (over-)running visual gag.

These are pretty minor flaws in an otherwise impressively controlled film.

[Orphic Lycidas]

Melancholia brand new American trailer.

[Finch]

give it a rest, Lars

[mfunk9786]

I love it.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Hilarious. A really neat twist on mainstream publicity. If the auteur is the biggest character in an arthouse film, than why not give him a one sheet? Also sneaking himself into the one area where even the most prominent and beloved auteurs don't usually hold sway, the advertising. And, of course, revealing the idiocy of the Cannes banning by turning it very publicly into profit. A very smart, witty, and endearingly obnoxious move by LVT, and infinitely preferable to the much more obvious and stale attention grabs that other "controversial" directors usually go for.

[domino harvey]

Brilliant.

[knives]

I didn't know Randy Quaid was in this movie (I'm sure I've made this joke before).

[mfunk9786]

Melancholia is the sort of film that becomes more impossible to forget the more you try to convince yourself that it's forgettable. Sure, while you're watching it, the first part of the story feels almost too melodramatic to take seriously. But once the second half kicks into gear, and one realizes what Lars von Trier is trying to communicate, the crippling sadness of what he's wrought is almost too much to bear. As someone who has wrestled with depression and a bona fide fear of death, I've often considered how much nicer it might be to die in tandem with the rest of the world rather than lie alone in bed while the world continues on without me. von Trier understands this sort of conundrum, and he clearly understands depression deeper than perhaps anyone else who's ever made a film about the subject. After another lyrical opening sequence (this is, in nearly every way, a sister film to Antichrist - the superego to its id), we open on the wedding of Justine (played with she'd-better-win-the-Oscar precision by Kirsten Dunst, who I never thought could be this good) and Michael, being held at a castle at the expense of Justine's wealthy sister and brother-in-law. By setting the introductory portion of the story at a lavish wedding, von Trier is wisely choosing what is for many women the dream of all dream days as his setting - to make Justine's unraveling at the hands of her own mental illness that much more jarring, disorienting, and increasingly bothersome. It begins as melodrama - why is this woman so miserable? Why does she insist upon acting this way? In a lot of ways, her brother-in-law John (a rare great role for Kiefer Sutherland) plays the part of the viewer throughout the film, trying to understand why the wedding that he shelled out for is coming apart all around him - but even he becomes woefully aware that Justine's problems are too much to just shrug off - his character development has the exact shape of the intended viewers' reaction to the developments that they're witnessing. The second part of the film moves at a brisk but thoughtful pace, and since we know exactly what's coming, it allows for a lot more observation of the disaster going on inside the minds of the characters on screen, rather than the disaster going on around them. Setting all this at a secluded location allows us to experience rotting rather than rioting. While Justine finds clarity in a way out of her mind and her terror, finds solace in the company that she'll have on the way out, her sister Claire comes apart with worry and struggles with her first encounter with the fear of the end of all things that Justine lives with every day.

If Antichrist was von Trier lashing out at the world over his illness, Melancholia is his quiet effort to make us understand how he feels. And he has created one of his best films in the process.

[zedz]

Nicely put. As the sometime-depression-sufferer I saw the film with put it, from that perspective the film has the happiest ending imaginable, and it's rare that a filmmaker actually 'gets' depression enough to employ it as a worldview rather than a plot device or Oscar engine.

[mfunk9786]

It's even more rare that I agree with zedz!

[zedz]

The world must be about to end!

[knives]

Well Andy Rooney retiring is the fourth sign of the apocalypse.

[swo17]

I see this is airing on HDNet on October 8th. End of the world party at my house! \:D/